Help system

["Blad, John Erling" <john erling blad aftenposten no>]

I've been foolin' around with an idea about a help application.

The idea is to have a set of rather small segments of help descriptions
for various subjects. These set of descriptions are then linked together
when the help engine gets enough information to do that or when the user
starts to query the help engine.

An other description of this is as a web site with a search engine. The
search engine remembers earlyer queries and builds preferred threads through
the site. Each such thread would describe some more or less specific topic.

There are a number of interesting items

  o The help system would evolve over time as items are added and corrected.
    There could even be threads that reflects the users skill level.
  o The help system could identify states and actions in the application
    and give context sensitive help on those items.
  o An application could query the help engine and generate help texts as
    the user interacts with the application, generating help text with an
    animated penguin.. Gee...
  o Threads could be reused for other languages too, only the help texts
have
    to be translated.

Anyone out there who have tried to make something similar?

John Blad